Capacity Management Benefits For The Cloud

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Capacity Management Benefits For The Cloud

Introduction

There are many benefits that enterprises can realize by moving workloads to the cloud, and organizations are using the cloud to manage many different types of workloads today. Organizations rely on private clouds to manage transaction-centric applications and more compute-intensive applications — workloads that require additional management — while public cloud is mostly used for session-oriented applications. As a result, whether adopting private, public, or hybrid clouds, enterprises can obtain significant business and economic benefits by using capacity management and monitoring solutions to optimize workloads. Capacity planning is no longer just a process aimed at forecasting hardware needs; it’s the key to understanding and optimizing the cost of running business services through platform selection.

This BMC Software-commissioned profile of US and UK enterprise IT operations decision-makers at organizations using or planning to use private cloud evaluates the adoption and benefits of capacity management to optimize workloads in the cloud, based on Forrester’s own market data and a custom study of the same audience.

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Flexibility And Cost Optimization Drive Cloud Adoption

Many organizations today are moving to the cloud for the increased infrastructure flexibility, continuity, scalability, and potential cost savings. However, to achieve these benefits, infrastructure and operations professionals need to carefully monitor and optimize the workloads they put in the cloud. In addition, organizations need to choose the type of cloud that will best work for their environment and workloads.

Forrester’s Business Technographics Global Infrastructure Survey, 2014 survey data reveals the following about private cloud adoption:

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Private cloud’s top benefits rely on workload optimization. Adopting private cloud can lead to many important benefits. Our Technographics data shows that the top benefits of adopting private cloud that are important to IT decision-makers are: 1) improved infrastructure manageability and flexibility (78%); 2) improved disaster recovery and continuity (78%); 3) on- demand capacity and scalability (73%); and 4) lower total

cost of ownership (73%) (see Figure 1). These top benefits can all be enhanced by optimizing workloads and drive the current growth of the cloud market. Forrester predicts that the cloud market will reach $191 billion by 2020, from a 2013 total of $58 billion.¹

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Organizations are using private cloud for transaction applications and compute-intensive applications. Our Technographics data shows that, on average,

organizations use either internal private cloud or hosted private cloud for a combined 68% of their transaction applications, while only 26% are hosted on public clouds (see Figure 2). Likewise, organizations use internal private clouds or hosted private clouds for 57% of their compute-intensive applications. This will most likely expand over the next few years as cloud becomes a mainstream technology for the enterprise, managed under master contracts by IT operations. Because of the critical workloads deployed on private and/or public cloud, quality of service and performance will be increasingly important.

FIGURE 1

Benefits To Adopting Private Cloud

Base: 432 US and UK enterprise IT decision-makers whose primary cloud is private or private hosted Source: Business Technographics Global Infrastructure Survey, 2014, Forrester Research, Inc.

Important (top 2) Middle (3) Not important (bottom 2) Don’t know

“How important were the following in your firm’s decision to adopt private cloud/hosted private cloud?”

Reduce power and cooling credits Temporary or project-based capacity needs, like special projects Eliminates need for capacity planning and/

or contract renegotiation Ability to use as peak capacity for times of high usage, such as the holiday season Faster time-to-market with new business capabilities Remain competitive as an IT organization Provides developers with fast, easy resources for test and development Improved performance for a global user base (either internal or external) Lower total cost of ownership for servers On-demand capacity and scalability Improved disaster recovery and business continuity Improved IT infrastructure manageability and flexibility

55% 22% 20% 3%

61% 24% 13% 2%

61% 25% 10% 3%

64% 20% 14% 2%

66% 21% 10% 3%

69% 17% 12% 2%

69% 21% 8% 2%

69% 19% 9% 3%

73% 21% 5% 1%

73% 19% 6% 1%

78% 16% 4% 1%

78% 18% 4% 0%

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Cloud Adoption Requires Capacity And Performance Management

In order to make sure that cloud environments are optimized and important workloads are available on demand, IT operations professionals rely on performance and capacity management solutions. In surveying 60 US and UK

enterprise IT operations or infrastructure decision-makers at organizations either implementing or planning to adopt private cloud, we found:

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Capacity management is essential to a cloud

transformation strategy. Ninety-three percent of US and UK IT operations and infrastructure decision-makers at companies adopting or planning to adopt private cloud rated capacity management as very important (28%) or important (65%) to a cloud transformation strategy (see Figure 3).

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Organizations are confident in their capacity management capabilities, but there is a gap. While 73% of US and UK IT operations and infrastructure decision-makers at companies adopting or planning to adopt private cloud rated their current capacity

management capabilities as high or very high, a significant gap appears between the importance of capacity management for a cloud transformation strategy and the capacity management abilities of enterprises (93% rated the needs as important or very important versus 73% rating their capabilities as high or very high) (see Figure 4).

Private Cloud Is Used More For Transaction Applications And Compute-Intensive Applications

Base: US and UK enterprise IT decision-makers

Source: Forrsights Hardware Survey, Q3 2013, Forrester Research, Inc.

Internal private IaaS (n = 154) Hosted private IaaS (n = 101) Public cloud (n = 72)

“For which types of applications or workloads does your firm use the following types of cloud solutions?”

(Average %)

Compute-intensive applications

24%27%30%

Transaction applications

26% 33%35%

Session applications

50%

40%

35%

FIGURE 3

Capacity Management Is Essential To A Cloud Transformation Strategy

Base: 60 US and UK IT operations and infrastructure decision-makers at companies adopting or planning to adopt private cloud

Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of BMC Software, October 2014

“On a scale of 1 to 5 (where 1 = ‘not at all important’

and 5 = ‘very important’), how do you rate the

role of capacity management in a cloud transformation strategy?”

Very important — 5 28%

Important — 4 65%

Somewhat important — 3

7%

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Private And Hybrid Cloud Prioritize Different Tools In Performance And Capacity Management

Because user visibility and controls are different in private and public clouds (and in hybrid solutions), operations professionals’ tool priorities differ according to the solution adopted. Our survey shows:

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Performance and capacity management are critical to private cloud management. Application/network/storage performance management ranked highly, with 50% or more of respondents ranking them as one of the three most critical capabilities required for private cloud management (see Figure 5). Forty-two percent selected holistic capacity management as one of the three most critical. This clearly shows that operations needs to control the whole infrastructure and requires more visibility into infrastructure components to provide effective

management.

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Hybrid cloud deployments require different priorities.

Hybrid cloud solutions present different challenges and require different management capabilities because public cloud infrastructures are not controlled by the client. The No. 1 priority becomes the ability to migrate workloads between private and public clouds (58% of respondents ranked this as one of the top three priorities) with a single management interface for both solutions (53% ranked this FIGURE 4

Most Organizations Feel Confident In Their Capacity Management Capabilities

Base: 60 US and UK IT operations and infrastructure decision-makers at companies adopting or planning to adopt private cloud

Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of BMC Software, October 2014

“On a scale of 1 to 5 (where 1 = ‘very low’ and 5 =

‘very high’), how do your rate your organization’s current capacity management capabilities?”

Very high — 5 23%

High — 4 50%

Average — 3 25%

Low — 2 2%

FIGURE 5

Performance And Capacity Management Are Critical To Private Cloud Management

Base: 60 US and UK IT operations and infrastructure decision-makers at companies adopting or planning to adopt private cloud Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of BMC Software, October 2014

1 2 3 4 5

“What do you believe are the critical capabilities required to manage a private cloud?”

(Rank your top five)

Holistic capacity management 17% 12% 13% 13% 8%

Automated resource allocation as

a function of workload variations 15% 8% 10% 13% 18%

Infrastructure monitoring 8% 15% 13% 17% 15%

End user performance monitoring 5% 10% 17% 20% 18%

Storage performance management 13% 27% 10% 18% 8%

Network performance management 25% 12% 20% 8% 13%

Application performance management 17% 17% 17% 10% 18%

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as a top three priority) (see Figure 6). Of course, holistic capacity planning is still very relevant, with 37% ranking it as a top three priority. Public and private cloud platforms play a role in helping a company be more agile. Clouds must be another set of options in the technology ecosystem. IT operations, embracing the role of service broker, will adopt the master governance role, where it must understand the capacity requirements, monitor performance, and eventually track costs. Implementing solid performance and capacity management capabilities is the lynchpin of cloud transformation.

Conclusion

Forrester survey results show that the adoption of cloud technologies is strong. Our survey shows that:

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The flexibility and cost advantages of cloud solutions, especially private clouds, are overwhelmingly illustrated by the results of Forrester’s Business Technographics Global Infrastructure survey, 2014.

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Capacity management is considered essential for cloud transformation. While using the same tool set, private and/or public cloud leads to different priorities for capacity management use cases. While on-premises private cloud puts a stronger emphasis on performance management, hybrid solutions prioritize workload migration and a unified management interface for both technologies.

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It is clear that adopting cloud technologies — private, public, or both — requires strong capabilities in performance and capacity management.

FIGURE 6

Capacity-Based Workload Migration Is Critical To Manage A Hybrid Cloud

Base: 60 US and UK IT operations and infrastructure decision-makers at companies adopting or planning to adopt private cloud Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of BMC Software, October 2014

1 2 3 4 5

“What do you believe are the critical capabilities required to manage a hybrid (private and public) cloud?”

(Rank the following options, where 1 is the most critical capability)

Holistic capacity management 17% 7% 13% 17% 13%

Management abstraction layer that present a

single service oriented management interface 23% 15% 15% 13% 13%

Application performance management 18% 13% 28% 7% 17%

End user performance monitoring

(response time and availability) 15% 18% 13% 20% 18%

Infrastructure monitoring 12% 17% 17% 23% 23%

Capacity-based workload migration from/

to private/public clouds 15% 30% 13% 20% 15%

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Methodology

This Technology Adoption Profile was commissioned by BMC Software. To create this profile, Forrester leveraged its Business Technographics Global Infrastructure Survey, 2014 and its Forrsights Hardware Survey, Q3 2013. Forrester Consulting supplemented this data with custom survey questions asked of US and UK enterprise IT operations or

infrastructure decision-makers at organizations either implementing or planning to adopt private cloud. Survey respondents included managers and above responsible for their organizations’ cloud operations management, strategy, and/or sourcing.

The auxiliary custom survey was conducted in October 2014. For more information on Forrester’s data panel and Tech Industry Consulting services, visit www.forrester.com.

Endnotes

1 Forrester Research projects that the public cloud market will reach $191 billion by 2020, from 2013's total of $58 billion.

Cloud applications, at $133 billion in 2020, are leading this growth; cloud platforms will generate $44 billion in revenue by 2020; and cloud business services will come in at $14 billion. Much of this growth is initiated by line of business and marketing and strategy leads, but CIOs and their technology management organizations are increasingly expected to be driving these initiatives. Source: “The Public Cloud Market Is Now In Hypergrowth,” Forrester Research Inc., April 24, 2014.

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